Read It Later Reviews #26 – All the Bitter Remains, Have a Safe Trip, Twilight, Gateway to Happiness, Let Them Eat Cake, The Cancellation of Prince Blueblood · 12:52am Aug 15th, 2015
The week has come and gone, but how could I let it end without another set of reviews?
Today’s stories:
All the Bitter Remains by Arcelia
Have a Safe Trip, Twilight by Arguing Pizza
Gateway to Happiness by Spacecowboy
Let Them Eat Cake by Ogopogo
The Cancellation of Prince Blueblood by Georg
All the Bitter Remains
by Arcelia
Sad, Slice of Life
1,455 wordsYears have passed since the discontinuation of the apple farm that resided south-west of Ponyville, yet even after the long, slow decay of the once vibrant orchard; one pony still lingers in the wheat grass and reminiscences in the sunlight.
Why I added it: The Royal Guard queue.
Review
Apple Bloom stands on a hill and looks down at the abandoned and apparently untended Sweet Apple Acres as she thinks about her childhood.
There’s really not much to the story save a certain wistfulness on Apple Bloom’s part (notably, the story misspells Apple Bloom as a single word – a mistake I made when I first was starting out as well), but it doesn’t really make sense. The story makes it clear that someone else bought Sweet Apple Acres, but if that’s the case, why aren’t they doing anything with it? Where do Applejack and Apple Bloom live now? We really get no sense of their life, which weakens the contrast that the story is going for – without any real understanding of where the character is now, it feels incomplete.
This story was written in a very purple manner. The prose is overwrought, and it tries to sound profound but ends up stumbling. Stories like this are often written in an ornate or flowery way, but when it isn’t done correctly, it ends up seeming like it is trying too hard. Take this, for example:
The sun slowly receded beyond the red-washed crimson sky, the autumn plains stretching on for miles as the golden wheat grass waved in the afternoon wind. Nearby, hanging from an old, reliable oak tree branch, was a worn rubber tire swing. It hung there, blowing gently and silently in the wind as the rope attached to it held it even after years of weather and wear.
The language is full of modifiers, and many of the modifiers just aren’t pulling their weight. Take “red-washed crimson sky”, for instance. Crimson sky already means it is red; adding “red-washed” to it doesn’t make sense, it is just repetitive. Golden wheat grass is another example; wheat and grass are redundant in this case, and it would work better as just golden wheat. Better still would be to emphasize that there are weeds mixed in with the wheat, to give the whole place a more abandoned feel.
Old, reliable oak tree branch is another example of overwrought language; there’s really no need for the modifiers, especially given that the next sentence goes on to point out that the swing is still attached after all these years, which already implies that it is old and reliable.
When you use a modifier, you need to be adding detail, not repeating it. Avoiding unnecessary modifiers makes prose more evocative.
The story also contradicts itself in places; Apple Bloom is noted as being at the peak of marehood, and yet has trouble walking up the hill because of her old legs? It doesn’t really fit together quite right, and the whole story ends up feeling a bit confused as it seems to not quite know where it is aiming with the characters – it all seems to be trying to invoke nostalgia far too hard, and as a result, fails to do so.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Have a Safe Trip, Twilight
by Arguing Pizza
Slice of Life
2,006 wordsWhen Twilight is called away for yet another dangerous adventure, Spike refuses to be left behind again. After all, he's a dragon, isn't he? The most mighty and fearsome race of creature in all the land! Why should he have to stay home and fret while Twilight risks herself to save Equestria?
Why I added it: The Royal Guard queue.
Review
Twilight has to make a perilous journey across the sea to meet with the Griffons and is going through her usual neurotic pre-trip checklist. Both she and Spike are worried she might have an episode while she’s gone, without Spike around, but she’s adamant that it is too dangerous for Spike to come along.
This story’s summary pretty much tells the entire story; there’s not much more to it than that. The story is also very telly in its language. These two features combined meant that it was kind of unpleasant to read, and then the story ended without going anywhere beyond the premise, with nothing really changing or being resolved.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
Gateway to Happiness
by Spacecowboy
Slice of Life
1,570 wordsEyes are a gateway to the soul
Even the most common sayings can lead into larger things. Twilight sends a letter to Celestia confronting her unjustly founded fears of Twilight's immortality years after the passing of her last friend.
Why I added it: It was a highly rated story about immortality.
Review
Twilight writes a letter to Celestia talking about seeing ponies through their eyes, and how she’s worried because she sees a lot of pain and fear in Celestia’s eyes these days.
I couldn’t really buy into Twilight’s characterization here; Twilight really was an introvert at the start of the show, and the idea that she could look into ponies’ eyes and see them for who they truly are is pretty questionable given her reactions to them in the first episode before she got to know them. Indeed, it was only later on that she really came to trust them as they progressed through the forest.
Moreover, the ending of the story ends up coming off as a “take that” to the immortality angst stories. Yes, they were tiresome and wrong, and didn’t really understand what they were doing, but this doesn’t really seem to clearly establish why Twilight thinks that the pain and fear in Celestia’s eyes – something which, apparently, has been there for a long time to one degree or another – is about Twilight being an alicorn.
Recommendation: Not Recommended
Let Them Eat Cake
by Ogopogo
Slice of Life
2,339 wordsPrincess Celestia takes a moment on her birthday to recall the cakes she has eaten and the memories they elicit.
Why I added it: I read it previously because it was about immortality.
Review
Celestia thinks about her three personal vices – gryphon-made whiskey, romance novels, and cake. She goes on about what cakes mean to her, and thinks about a few specific cakes which arrived at important moments in her life.
A fairly simple story, it hinges around the central premise that Celestia talking about cakes and their significance to her would be interesting. And while the idea sounds interesting, the story didn’t actually interest me nearly as much as I thought it would. I remember reading it a long time ago and liking it, but when I reread it today, it just kind of felt like it was lacking in real emotional substance to me. It was a clever idea, but neither the cakes nor the memories were sufficiently evocative for me to really get into Celestia here.
I think my favorite part of the story, aside from the end, was the bit about carrot cake:
Sadly, just because it is something you love, does not mean you will always enjoy it. To this day, there is a reason I will never again eat carrot cake. The taste is fine, but the memories which accompany it are not. The first time I prevailed over Nightmare Moon, it cost me a sister for one thousand years, a duration which seemed barely shorter than an eternity. Yet my subjects threw a celebration for me in my victory. The centerpiece of the entire celebration was a twelve layer carrot cake. When they passed me a piece, they did so eagerly awaiting my judgement. Carrot cake may be something I swore off, but my sister always had adored it. Every year since she was old enough to request it, she would ask for a carrot cake for her birthday. As I stood there and placed her favourite dessert in my mouth, it tasted like ash.
It was in that moment that the weight of my actions finally struck me. I had lost my sister: my only family. I swallowed the cake, shakily smiled at the ponies crowded around me and told them it was divine. Then, I excused myself and hurried towards my room. I hadn’t even made it ten steps before tears were streaming down my face and my breath came out in ragged sobs. I cried till I didn’t have any tears left to shed, and then I cried some more. Were it not for my friends back then (and the whiskey which one of them introduced me to), I may have never been lifted from my depression. Carrot cake still is to me a symbol of my failure.
But even there, it felt a bit overwrought somehow; many words were spent there, but it all felt a bit distant to me, and I’m not quite sure if it was the narrative style, or simply that the subject didn’t end up as interesting to read about as it seemed like it would.
Recommendation: Not Recommended.
The Cancellation of Prince Blueblood
by Georg
Comedy
1,634 wordsIt is said that every dog has its day, that every wrong will be eventually righted, and that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For Prince Blueblood, these were simply words that applied to other ponies; he had no problem stomping over, mowing down, destroying, or flattening any pony who stood in his way.
Until today.
Why I added it: It was recommended to me.
Review
Prince Blueblood is a vain ponce who spends much of his time researching just how blue his blood really is, but this time, he has gone too far. Someone is coming for him, to right a great wrong, to bring down the hammer of law on his head…
This is a silly little piece, but there isn’t a whole lot of meat to it; really, the comedy hinges pretty much entirely on whether or not you enjoy the sort of whimsical tone the whole piece takes as it gives a bit of backstory on the Blueblood family, as well as the frontstory in terms of how Blueblood’s line is just about to be ended.
The writing is also a bit rough in a few places; nothing too awful, but it was noticeable.
Still, there were a few little jokes sprinkled throughout the text, such as the name of Blueblood’s guard captain, for the story to keep me amused throughout its (very brief) length.
Recommendation: Worth reading if you enjoy silly little jokes sprinkled throughout the text, but avoid if you’re looking for something more substantial.
Summary
All the Bitter Remains by Arcelia
Not Recommended
Have a Safe Trip, Twilight by Arguing Pizza
Not Recommended
Gateway to Happiness by AUTHOR
Not Recommended
Let Them Eat Cake by Ogopogo
Not Recommended
The Cancellation of Blueblood by Georg
Worth Reading
I’ve got a little pile of stories I’ve reviewed in my backlog, so expect a few more sets of reviews to be doled out regularly over the next few weeks.
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – Important: 77
Number of stories still listed as Read It Later – High Priority: 319
Number of stories listed as Read It Later: 1637
At this rate you may catch up to PP by the end of next year! :B
You should stick Beside Every Great Dragon There is a Great Moon in your Read it Later shelf. It's a quality piece.
3320541
Only because I'm procrastinating. D:
Damn, only one again.
3320541
Yeah, I've got a uh, ways to go there.
3320558
Looks interesting. I'll keep an eye on it.
3320601
I spent all day after I posted this procrastinating.
3320678
I'm working on a recommended story review set which will probably be out in the next week or two, depending on when I get around to re-reading the stories in the set.
Thanks for the review. Occasionally a short little humorous bit like this will escape my pen and flee to the internet. I'm glad you liked it.